Thanatosensitivity and the Thought of Exploring Loyalty After Death.

Loyalty!?

Most brands across industry are fighting this endless marketing war to retain their customers or engage with new ones, improve their presence in a particular segment, boost spending, or just show customers that they appreciate them for being loyal. The outcomes of loyalty can range from cheap discounts to flamboyant experiences, depending on which end of the spectrum you belong to or how much your money can really buy to boost your ego. What ever the reason, this is currently designed to be a one-way street, I have never heard of brands keeping the same loyalty that they seek so hard.?

In the cacophony of marketing, and business and the never ending need to boost the ego of the individuals who often flex their muscles of money power, there seems to be very little room for integrity. How do you as a brand want to be viewed by your customers, irrespective of their position through life. Is loyalty a function of how much they can buy while they live or is loyalty more than that, because the original meaning of loyalty means something else!!!

Am not talking about marketing and its flamboyance anymore. I am talking about the brands principles and integrity and what they need to possibly do to return the favour when it comes to life long loyalty. While this is a universal questions, let me focus on Retail Banking.

We sign up with a bank(s) and live with them through life, giving them a view of our graduation from regular customers? to mass affluent customers to high value customers based on our luck with fate. And there are a string of loyalty reward programs to keep us glued to them. Great!?

But do you realise that in the Brand’s mind, you are no more than an account number/customer ID. You may stick with the bank forever, build a relationship with those associated with the branch, they may come home and help your parents with their financial transactions,? but that is based on the integrity of the individual, it is not to be mixed with the bank's integrity as a whole. This loyalty is built on human relationships which turns out to be pretty individual, it is not really brand centric.?

But loyalty also lasts just as long as the customer lasts, in the inevitable eventuality that they pass away, doesn’t the loyalty program just come crashing down? Does no one else benefit from the relationship that has been built over time with this single customer, beyond handing over the account to the nominee, assuming all the legal paperwork has gone smoothly.?

Here is where I believe banks need to rethink their strategy.?

The evolution of banking itself has been from the bank’s perspective, it has not evolved keeping the customer in mind and now, in the rat race to personalisation, It is very difficult for banks to change their ways of thinking and working. The bank looks at a customer as an individual, devoid of a family (am not considering joint accounts because all of us are tutored by the banks). The customer is a single account number with a history of transactions. The bank has not thought about the other 5 customers who are part of this person’s life in reality, bonding with them in a honest relationship, but isolated in the bank’s spectrum of data. These relationships don’t exist in the bank’s universe because they didn’t even consider this possibility while sitting on a pile of data that cannot connect the dots through logic that in reality, these 5 customers are actually related by a close bond within the family or just pure friendship. Why have banks not considered bringing people together digitally? Is it because human beings fundamentally turn weak in integrity when it comes to money?

What if we looked at banking from the customer’s stand point, without being tutored on how banking has evolved for whatever call of fate. What if we considered grouping families together digitally, assuming we ticked all the boxes of govt. regulation, compliance, GDPR and privacy and took mutual consent . End of the day these regulations were defined by humans and for humans to operate in an apparently controlled social order, evolving with time.?So change is inevitable!

What if a loyalty program was designed for the whole family instead of individuals, and a larger group benefited from it. And what if loyalty programs extended after death. The concept of thanatosensitivity is fast becoming a reality in current times with the evolution of AI, and the societal evolution of people in the digital universe is manifesting in strange ways. While Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms make memorials for their dearly departed, leaving behind memories and pictures of the good people they were during life on their profile pages, this will have far reaching consequences on society when it comes to banking and other more serious, security driven industries in the future.?

Thanatosensitivity is a new expression of immortalising somebody in the digital space, and on a robust foundation of technology with or without a strong backing of digital integrity, thanatosensitivity has taken birth. Industry has to rethink their strategy in this evolving digital universe driven by strange human behaviour over time and brand loyalty has to make the most of it, with integrity and sensitivity, if there is volume in a universe of digital natives!

As of today, banks are not there to support us during the moment of bereavement, that is a lonely journey to cross to reach normalcy again. Banks may or may not be sensitive enough to hand hold you through the journey even if the dead were a super loyal customer! Can we change the rules on the grounds of humanity, in banking to support those who are bereaved with more empathy, bring the family together digitally and based on individual comfort, wouldn’t it be a stronger brand building exercise for the bank to take up the responsibility to see the bereaved through to the other side emotionally and financially secure? Banks need to start considering the social nature of individuals, and create a safe platform where group of people can unite financially and emotionally, be it during life or after death.?

Loyalty is a human emotion that brands have always wanted to cash in on, it is now time for brands to revisited their end of the bargain to ensure a deep relationship with an individual who has passed away is well preserved with the living, and eventually celebrated; that would be the best tribute a bank could give to the departed, because end of the day, they are way more than a customer ID or an account number!!

This would redefine real loyalty in the digital age!